John Whittingdale: the minister, the papers and the dominatrix
We will probably never know if the newspapers that didn’t publish the Whittingdale story were hoping to apply pressure to the Culture Secretary. But the truth is this Culture Secretary didn’t need much pressure applied. His instincts were close to theirs.
True, he changed his public position on a couple of areas but, as with David Cameron, you have to wonder how deeply committed he was to the 2 public positions that Hacked Off spokespeople have been pointing to today.
The likelihood of Phase 2 of the Leveson Inquiry being run probably died a very very long time ago. On the day Leveson started back in November 2011 there were senior lawyers in Whitehall saying Phase 2 would never happen.
The public pronouncements by the government about Section 40 of the 2013 Crime and Courts Act (bringing in hefty damages for newspapers outside the official regulator) were something many senior Tories never wanted.
With the comforts of a majority and no Lib Dems about Whitehall to pester them the pressure to implement these commitments is still around but much reduced.
So the newspapers, as even one prominent Hacked Off campaigner acknowledged to me, may not have held the story they knew about John Whittingdale’s private life over him like a sword of Damocles. But there’s a strong argument for thinking they treated this story differently from others, that they self-censored.
There could also be an argument for thinking that John Whittingdale should have told No. 10 and his Permanent Secretary at DCMS about the issue when he joined the Cabinet.
Some interviewees today have been proclaiming that what we’re seeing is that the newspapers have turned over a new leaf and wouldn’t want to turn over a relatively unknown man for blameless acts in his private life and with no public interest defence.
There could be a long queue of people who might think that hasn’t stopped newspapers showing enormous interest in their lives.